The cost of digital silence in Turkey: 40 million euros

Turkey is known for attempts to control information contradicting
official propaganda. However, a recent deal between the Turkish Government and
a Swedish company running software to combat child porn could silence the
digital opposition permanently.

At first glance,
Turkey seems to be a friendly tourist destination. However, there is a
disturbing evidence that the country is having trouble providing its citizens
with a right to freedom of speech. Hasan “Barva” Keleş, a Turkish activist, has
experienced pressure from the authorities over his campaign following the Gezi
park events.

After the police
crackdown on the protesters, he decided to gather footage of secret police in
the streets of Istanbul and put them on YouTube. He would go around the city,
taking selfies and shooting videos of himself standing next to a secret police
officer. Although in plain clothes, members of the special unit could be
recognized by a particular black backpack they were always wearing.

“The policemen had
already beaten me up at the Atatürk Cultural Center, out of the sight of
cameras. I know they also might call my company to let me go. When you mess
with the government, you have to be ready for this,” says Keleş. Still, he
decided to keep up his fight despite the personal consequences he could suffer. ”If
I die, thousands more will come to fill my place,” he adds.

Almost fifty thousand
websites banned

Online numbers
suggest a similar practice of limiting free speech is being applied on websites
in Turkey. “Currently, our country leads the world in demands for removal of
content from global digital corporations, even though in most cases these
demands are in violation of freedom of expression or the right to acquire
information,” says Yaman Akdeniz, professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and an
Internet rights advocate.

Between May 2007 and
July 2014, Turkey blocked access to approximately 48,000 websites subject to
its controversial Internet Law No. 5651. Human rights lawyer Gönenç Gürkaynak
points out that Turkey’s censorship ranking is confirmed by the latest Google
and Twitter transparency reports.

Sometimes, not only
is the content removed, but also its authors – from their work positions.
According to Gökhan Tan, a Turkish journalist and photographer, there are two
main ways this is done. For anyone criticizing the state, “either there will be
a letter from the government requiring you to be fired or, if you are lucky,
you will be advised by your editor to drop the subject.”

Threats of
murder and rape

Tuğba Tekerek, a
journalist at Taraf, a liberal Turkish newspaper, also felt the consequences of
speaking out. “It is already hard for me to get accepted into any media company
close to the government because of my critical tweets about Erdoğan,” she says.

As for censorship and
self-censorship in Turkish newspapers, she says various standards are
applied. “Some editors just tell you to watch your Twitter. Others
directly order you not to tweet about politics to make sure you stay on the
safe side.”

"Every journalist
in Turkey knows he is being followed and feels the pressure that he will be
fired if he tweets against the government. There are stories about people from
government coming to newsrooms with a file on each journalist. They approach
editors and tell them what you have been tweeting and that it should stop.”

According to Tekerek,
woman journalists face a special threat. “The Justice and Development Party
(AKP), the leading government party, uses an army of ‘trolls’ on the Internet.”
Anyone running foul of Erdoğan risks massive amount of people loyal to the AKP
flooding their Twitter wall. If that person is a woman, they will not stop at
regular insults. “Threats will include murder, rape, or preferably, both.
Chauvinism is still strong in Turkey.”

A cover up
for corruption

Sometimes, the Twitter
admins themselves step in. Barkın Karslı is a journalist who was directly
contacted by Twitter and asked to delete a tweet. He was also warned that he
might be subject to penalty due to a Turkish court order sent to Twitter.

His tweet contained a
link to a telephone recording between a pro-AKP businessman Abdullah Tivnikli
and an official consultant of Prime Minister Erdoğan, İbrahim Kalın, who
incriminated him.

This case illustrates
another example of the usual excuses concerning the censorship of content in Turkey. “Protection of private life”
apparently also includes leaked phone conversations about high-level
corruption. “For the time being I am trying to get the whole picture of what is
happening and what will happen to me,” says Karslı.

Some decide to leave
the country to avoid prosecution. Mahir Zeynalov, a journalist from Azerbaijan
posted a Twitter message last December 25 stating, 'Turkish prosecutors order
police to arrest al-Qaeda affiliates, Erdogan's appointed police chiefs refuse
to comply' linking to Today's Zaman
website. Zeynalov was targeted by pro-government media in a smear campaign
and immediately sued by Erdoğan, demanding a prison sentence. Following an
official deportation order from the state, he decided to leave Turkey.

Banning ‘low
morals’

All this has not
silenced public discontent. So Turkey has repeatedly witnessed complete bans of
YouTube and Twitter, among others. Most recently, Twitter was banned nationwide
during March and YouTube was down for April. Erdoğan treats social media as a
source of ‘low morals’ in society, sometimes with unfortunate consequences.

Anadolu Üniversitesi in
Istanbul, the second largest in the world by enrolment, provides distance
learning for visually handicapped students. Around two years ago, two weeks
before exams, students lost all access to the learning materials on YouTube.
The authorities did not provide any alternative so the university had to search
for other ways to get them through their education.

Other collateral
victims were those needing blood and organs, who could not connect with donors
days before the March elections, says Tekerek.

Don’t touch
my internet

In May 2011, during huge
protests in 36 cities in Turkey, a march was called in Istanbul, under the
banner, Don’t touch my Internet. In
one of the busiest avenues in the city centre, the Istiklal Caddesi near Taksim
square, tens of thousands of Turks gathered to protest against new changes in
the infamous Internet Law No. 5651. The Turkish Telecommunications Directorate
(TIB) had decided to ban 138 words from Turkish domain site names.

Those words could
potentially lead to porn websites, but this ban in fact put many ordinary sites
out of operation. For example, the website “donanimalemi.com”
(hardwareworld.com) was closed because the domain name had banned the word
“animal” in it. Likewise “sanaldestekunitesi.com,” (virtualsupportunit.com)
would not be able to operate under its current name because it had “anal” in
it.

The protest itself was
peaceful, so was the police response. There was no violence, even though the
streets were filled with an angry mob. “I don’t remember any police violence
against protesters before Gezi park events. It was usual for Kurds, but not for
Istanbul people,” says Turkish student Canberk Begyova.

Tweets end up
at court

Then came May 2013 and the
whole of Turkey was plunged into the turbulent Gezi events. This was also the
turning point for Turkey’s online sphere. Among others, 29 women and men were
prosecuted for sending tweets during protests. “It was only after Gezi when the
reality hit the people on the ground. When the Twitter users were called up for
trial, we realized that we can actually be sued for what we write on Twitter,”
says Azerbaijani blogger Arzu Gebullayeva, presently living in Turkey.

The users were accused
of “inciting the public to break the law” and could face up to three years in
prison. Three of them were also accused of ‘insulting’ Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime
minister of Turkey at that time, and named as a victim in the case. Even though
Erdoğan is always happy to criticize Facebook and Twitter as a root of all
evil, he himself has a Facebook page with over 700,000 likes.

The tweets provided information
such as locations where the police were using force against demonstrators,
passwords for available wireless networks in the protest area, or contained
opinions and messages of support for the demonstrations. According to Amnesty
International, none of them contained any incitement to, or indication of
participation in, violence.

Censoring to
prevent crime

After a whole series of
protests following Gezi, organizers of the Don’t
touch my Internet march decided to do another event in January 2014. This
time, the reason was the even stricter internet regulation proposed by the
government. Power was given them to block websites or remove content accused of
privacy violations without a court decision. All this could be done in merely
four hours. Internet providers were also instructed to keep user information
for two years and provide it to government on request.

Another law debated in
parliament proposes that website owners should be required to register their
full names and names of the authors who write for them. The law is very similar
to the one adopted by the Russian Duma in August. “If this passes - and it
probably will - it will be an open book system. If the government knows who
owns each website, they will be able to easily arrest anybody,” adds
Gebullayeva.

Recent developments
show that the direction towards stricter censorship is clear. In the first days
of September, a new law expanded the powers of TIB even further. Now, websites
can be blocked if it is deemed necessary for matters of "national
security, the restoration of public order and the prevention of crimes".
Previously, these powers were limited only to cases of privacy
violations.

The system itself
becomes so complicated that the average user can’t really understand what could
be subject to censorship. “Will they censor this? Yes. No. Maybe. Actually,
people don’t know how things are going to work out. We just learn the tricks to
defend ourselves from these laws,” explains Begyova.

Software to
profile citizens

Recently, Turkey is witnessing
new talks taking place that could lead to even tighter online censorship.
Turkish Telecom, for example, has begun negotiations with Procera Networks for
the acquisition of software that will allow it to monitor visited web pages,
HTTPS traffic, and exchanges on Whatsapp and Skype services. This company,
which specializes in “location awareness” services (basically Orwellian Newspeke
for online surveillance), has future plans which are very disturbing.

“Leaked documents that
were published by daily Taraf show
that the government will ask Procera to actually carry out the things we were
afraid of in the first place. Their software could be used for
mass-surveillance and profiling of citizens according to their ethnic,
religious, linguistic, sexual, political affiliations and identities,” said
Gurkan Ozturan from the Pirate party in Turkey.

40 million
euros to filter the internet

The Interior Ministry
of Turkey has recently announced a deal with Swedish Internet company NetClean
that was founded with donations from Queen Sylvia of Sweden. For a price tag of
40 million euros, they have purchased an online content filtering software.

Using an automated
method called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), it is able to remove malicious
content and alleged child pornography from Twitter and other sites
automatically within five seconds, according to the report from Turkish
newspaper Hürriyet Daily News.

However, pro-government SabahDaily published an article stating that the software will also be
used to remove “black propaganda” from Twitter. This time, the Turkish
government decided not to try and hide their ambition to censor content as an
attempt to protect children. Although the article was later pulled off the
site, it was republished on Haber7 website where it is still accessible.

Officially, the
government rejects accusations of censorship, yet there are serious doubts
about the true reasons behind the implementation of the software.

“We are now told, in a
country where violence towards women and children are systematically neglected,
that DPI will be put in place out of a concern for child pornography,” said a
representative of Alternative Informatics Association in the opening speech at
Ungov Forum.

Even though government
intentions on protecting children are always strongly promoted in pro-AKP
media, the ‘offline’ world looks different. The country lacks policies to cope
with child brides or child labour. “Children get subjected to all kinds of
terrible things and they decide to protect children online; it does not seem
very sincere to me,” says Gürkan Özturan from the Pirate Party in Turkey.

In addition, DPI is
extremely intrusive and, although it can be used to block certain kinds of
content, it would also allow to the authorities to access the content of emails
and other confidential material. The way this system works can be explained by a
simple analogy. When the postman delivers a postcard, he looks only at the
address. Using DPI, it is as if he read the whole letter.

The effectiveness of
the system in combating online paedophilia is, quoting the words of Ilden
Dirini of the Alternative Informatics Association, “like using a sledgehammer
to crack a nut.” When used, the DPI allows the authorities to see credit card
information, direct messages on social sites and virtually any online content
running on the Turkish infrastructure.

Child
protection or silencing the opposition?

Although negotiations
on the NetClean deal take place behind closed doors, Tunca Öğreten from the daily
Taraf was able to acquire a secret
leaked memo from TIB. It requires Internet providers in Turkey to purchase the hardware
necessary for running DPI software.

Some providers still objected
that breaching of the HTTPS security protocol required is unlawful. However, Taraf reports that those providers were
given a blunt answer from TIB: “There are countries that are able to breach
HTTPS traffic; figure it out and do the same.”

There is a clear gain in
these mechanisms of the deal for the Turkish government. The telecommunication
authority does not install the censorship software on its own and asks private
companies to do it. According to the present Internet Law No. 5651, the authorities
are allowed to require providers to comply, otherwise their licences will be
revoked. Yet, responsibility for any misconduct concerning access to the
sensitive user information falls on those companies.

When the infrastructure
is ready, the censorship and surveillance software will be implemented by a
Turkish company called Anka IT and Consulting, which is now an official partner
of NetClean.

The problem is not with
the original purpose of NetClean’s software, which is locating and removing
child abuse content. However, the fact that the government might use it for
silencing the opposition is disturbing.

There is a petition
called Alet Etme (Do not make use of) that has tried to start a debate on this
issue. “The government is using the concept of child protection as a cover to
really limit the content on the Internet,” explains Gebullayeva.

Digital gestapo
is born

If President Erdoğan
decides to use these newly acquired means to censor Turkish online space, the
whole process will be done out of the public sight. “New bills along with the
plans to install NetClean software allow the Turkish secret service to become a
digital Gestapo,” explains Özturan. “In one or two years, Turkey will become
even stricter in online censorship than China or Iran,” adds Öğreten.

Kerem Altiparmak,
assistant professor doctor from Ankara University and renowned Turkish Internet
rights advocate says: “With other measures that are being taken by the
government, the Internet will completely be under control in Turkey.”

So far, the incidents
with popular journalists, massive public protests and the development of
Turkey’s Internet laws clearly show that Erdoğan is not a fan of democratic
dialogue with the opposition. And judging from his recent moves, the plan for
the future does not promise any light at the end of the still narrower tunnel
of strict censorship in Turkey.

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